EXPLOSIONS IN LONDON

[Sweetpea]

My daughter works at UCL in London. She gets on at Liverpool Street and alights at Moorgate. Both were caught up in the bombs. My daughter had a doctors appoinment on the Tuesday, she changed it to Thursday. Thank God she did. I cannot help but think her spirit was with her.

London's mayor and his "heretical" views (and I agree with them... Don't look at me like we live in a so called democratic free society don't we?).

Decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers, Ken Livingstone has suggested. The London mayor told BBC News he had no sympathy with the bombers and he opposed all violence.

But he argued that the attacks would not have happened had Western powers left Arab nations free to decide their own affairs after World War I.

Instead, they had often supported unsavoury governments in the region.


Mr Livingstone was asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme what he thought had motivated the bombers.

He replied: "I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil.

"We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.

"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators."

No justice?

Mr Livingstone said Western governments had been so terrified of losing their fuel supplies that they had kept intervening in the Middle East.

He argued: "If at the end of the First World War we had done what we promised the Arabs, which was to let them be free and have their own governments, and kept out of Arab affairs, and just bought their oil, rather than feeling we had to control the flow of oil, I suspect this wouldn't have arisen."

He attacked double standards by Western nations, such as the initial welcome given when Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. There was also the "running sore" of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," said Mr Livingstone.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4698963.stm

Published: 2005/07/20 11:12:08 GMT

© BBC MMV

[Mattylad]

Oh no, more bombs in London.

No reported casualties yet though, reports of a nail bomb & one that went off in someones rucksack etc.

[Bleys]

Scary experience. I've jusy got back from working in London. I was on the tube at Warren Street just before the one went off there. I didn't know anything about it until I was safely on the train back to Preston.

[janet]

It seems a very amature attempt this time.Thank goodness.

[Jason]

Yes at least no-one was killed!!!

[Burnley (USA)]

To all of you over there, you have my deepest sympathies-as the days before us are going to be dark indeed.

[ryhunt2000]

I live in Canada right now, but I must admit I was devastated by the news of the bombings in London. No matter how much we disagree with the leaders of the world searching for these terrorists, if we do not support them, this kind of thing could be happening in many other places at the same time.
We have to back our leaders and make these so-called "terrorists" who I would rather refer to as "cowards", understand that the "just society" is not going to back off and let them take over our world.
Blessings,
Ry